


The Light Of Others

by Alex Feinman (afeinman)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10883784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afeinman/pseuds/Alex%20Feinman
Summary: Luke travels to Fest to fulfill a promise he's made.





	The Light Of Others

Luke Skywalker was walking along a forested ridge road, looking down at the setting sun; how odd, it still was, to see only a single sunset each day. His trip back to Tatooine was fading in his memory, the wounds done healing, but sometimes the feelings were still raw; and there were things he had to do.

The trail led along the ridge to a series of switchbacks, well-reinforced with stone; below, he could see the rising walls of Mos Doba, a small outpost well outside the capital. It was his first time on the planet of Fest, about as far from Tatoonine as it was from the bright center of the universe; if it hadn't been for R2's astronav, he'd never have found the way.

He just hoped that he could find whom he sought.

Dust had completely covered his boots by the time he made it to town; the ridge distorted distances. He was glad when he finally made it to the paved surface outside of town. In the distance, he could hear the howls and cries of beasts in the forest, and hoped R2 would be sensible and stay with the fighter; they didn't sound friendly.

The sun had set; but this was a border town, and the gate was staffed at all hours. "Halt!" a voice rang out: a human voice, he noted, rare as humans were this far from the central core. "Stand and be reconized."

"My name's Luke," he said, his voice reflecting off the tall stone walls. "I'm looking for a woman named Seki Andor. I've come a long way."

"Who?" the woman asked.

"Seki Andor? Mother of Cassian?"

The pair at the gate stared at each other; he could see their uniforms, cobbled together from a mix of Imperial and Republic pieces. This far out, the Empire had only had sporadic, if brutal, influence; a platoon would land, enforce arbitrary laws, crush uprisings, then move on to the next planet.

"We haven't heard of her. Who did you say you were?"

"Luke Skywalker." Luke was getting impatient; he breathed deeply, trying to think of how Master Yoda would want him to behave. What would a Jedi Knight do in this situation?

"I've heard of you," the woman said. "Endor, right? We got the news over subspace a while back."

Luke nodded. "Endor. Hoth. Yavin."

The door swung open with a squeak. "Welcome to Mos Doba," the woman said.

* * *

The city was small but dense, fifty thousand people packed into high stone walls. The guards pointed him to a bar that had also some beds to let; Luke wasn't sure he was staying that long, but it seemed prudent to have the option. The bar had a scorched Imperial crest for a sign, blaster marks defacing its circular form; he had the darndest feeling it had been cut right off a passing troop transport or downed fighter.

He paused for a moment to settle his feelings, then edged his way inside.

"--says she don't NEED to know who I am, I'm the guy with the gun! Aw-hahaha!" A tall Kiffar was holding court at the bar, a small pack around him; Luke didn't recognize the pattern of his tattoos, but her manner was clear. 

"What'd'ya mean?" a shorter man asked. "You really pulled a gun on her?"

"Nah, I didn't need to, she got the hint." The Kiffar knocked back her glass, shoved it back in the drinks dispenser, and waited for it to refill. "What're we talking about my love life for, anyway? This is my one night I don't HAVE to think about that!"

"Sorry, Ros, just asking," the shorter man replied.

The young jedi sat at the other end of the bar, got a low glass of Keela from the dispenser in front of him, and waited for curiosity to take hold.

It took a few minutes--the drinking buddies were content to snub the newcomer for that long, at least. Then one of them worked up enough courage to look his way; then another, and another, until the whole pack was giving him the eye. Luke felt his heart jump, then willed it to slow; the warm comfort of the Force filled him, and calmed him down.

The leader approached, her emotions mixed and tangled to Luke's eyes. "Hey. Haven't seen you before."

"I just got here. My name's Luke."

"I don't CARE what your name is. Where're you come from?"

Luke gave that a moment's thought. He'd last been in the Jedha system, but his searches there had proved fruitless; before that, Onderon, equally so. But this woman didn't want to know that. "Tatooine," he said, making his decision.

"Haw, you're more of a hick than we are!" a man in back laughed. Luke raised his glass in a salute.

One of the other men, a tiny Twi'lek who only came up to Luke's elbow, held up a hand and pointed.

"What is it, Loba?" the ringleader asked.

The Twi'lek pointed and jabbered. Luke couldn't make out most of it--it wasn't a dialect he'd heard before--but the thing at the end of Loba's finger was Luke's lightsaber.

The crowd, seemingly in synchronization, took a step back. "We don't want any trouble," the tall one said.

"Neither do I," Luke quickly added. He paused. "Look. We got off on the wrong foot. I'm here to have a drink and try to find a friend of mine. Maybe you could help?" He thought, fast and hard, about pushing that last question--giving it just enough of an edge to ensure compliance in the weak-minded; but at the last minute he stopped himself. That way led to meddling, to giving in to impatience; to the long slope downward.

"Luke, you said?"

The jedi nodded.

"Skywalker?"

Another nod.

"I've heard of you. I'm Beebo. Locals call me Ros." The Kiffar held out a hand hesitantly. "You're--you aren't going to use some jedi trick on me, are you?"

Luke smiled and shook his head, no. He took the hand. "Ros."

"What the hell are you doing all the way out here?" Ros sat down beside him, one stool over, just close enough to be friendly, just far enough away to feel safe. The others filled in, trying to be close enough to hear.

"I told you; I'm looking for a friend."

"We can find you a _friend_ ," one of the men said, bringing a round of laughter. Luke smiled, a bit sadder than he'd expected at the thought of some companionship; it wasn't something he'd thought about the past few years, not since Leia--well, not in a long time.

"Who's this friend?" Ros asked.

"She's--I knew her--I didn't know her son," Luke said. But he did, through long hours of research: ceaseless days in the rebel archives, encrypted paper records pointing to the few remaining keepers of knowledge; long trips halfway across the galaxy to try to find surviving members of old insurrectionist cells, remnants of the Confederacy. "But I owe him my life."

That sobered Ros up. "Some kind of life debt thing?"

Luke had to bite back a smile at that; the idea of Chewie chastising him about life debts was hard to ignore. "You could say that. He gave his life for me, in a way I didn't find out about until much, much later."

"I'm not going to stand between a man and his debt," Ros said. "This town ain't that large. Probably someone knows someone. What's her name?"

Luke looked around at the mean faces and rough tempers around him; but the Force within them told a different story. There was a brutalness here, but a kindness too, and a lack of guile he found refreshing. "A human, named Seki. Seki Andor. Or maybe she's going by Seki Jeron, now." It'd taken seven months to wrest _that_ name from the damaged Imperial archives at Carida Academy, where Cassian's father had died.

The crowd fell silent. Ros looked around, but no one wanted to meet her eye.

"We'll ask around. You staying long?"

"Just as long as it takes," Luke said. "Figured I'd ask for a room here."

"Ask 'em for a room at the front," Ros said. "The garbage pit's out back."

* * *

After a quick check-in with R2 by commlink, Luke lay down on the bed and tried to sleep; but he was too keyed up. One of the men had known something, that bald one in the back; but they weren't talking.

He knew better, now, than to push--that was the old Luke, going off half-cocked, rushing in without a plan. The man would tell Seki; and she would decide whether to see Luke.

He meditated on that, seeking wisdom in the Force, but no vision came.

"Jedi stay for free," the barkeep said in the morning, when he tried to pay. "Especially ones who blew up the Death Star."

"Thank you," Luke said; and he meant it. The reality hadn't sunk in yet; he'd been Luke Skywalker, T-16 racer round the Stone Needle, for much longer than he'd been Son Of Skywalker, Hero of the Republic. Some time after Hoth it had started to become clear, how much others had sacrificed so that he could be who he was; not just Owen and Beru, not just Ben. All the others.

"You staying another night?" 

"Depends, I guess," Luke answered. He shook his head and tried to get back to reality. "Is there--where would I go to buy something local? Like, if I wanted to bring some gifts home to some friends."

"Looking for anything in particular?" the barkeep asked.

"Just--what's Fest famous for?"

"Search me. I just live here."

"C'mon--there's got to be something you're proud of. Something beautiful? Something unusual?" He saw the look on the barkeep's face, and dropped the subject. "Then just some lunch, I guess."

"There's a marketplace on Knowl; head left, and keep walking till you hear the barkers. You can get pretty much whatever you want there."

"Thanks."

Luke took the long way, but when he arrived the market was still setting up. He had gotten up early by local standards, the long days of Fest colliding with his haphazard sleep schedule. There was a line of fruit stalls, some vegetables and larger produce he thought might be some kind of melon, and racks of meat chunked up for cooking. A wide-faced Kitonak nodded and waved.

"Hey, can I get one of those--skewers?" he asked.

"Cooked? It'll take a while," the Kitonak said.

"I've got time," Luke said.

"Good, good. Too many of your kind aren't patient enough to wait for a real meal."

It did take a while; long enough that most of the stalls were fully set up before Luke had his food. The meat, he found out, was from a bakki, one of the large jerba-like herbivores that were farmed locally; the wild population was kept in check by the Kuka, which Luke pictured as only slightly less fearsome than the krayt dragons of his youth. The meat tasted more like hard rations than meat, but the spices helped.

By the time it was finished, he'd also heard almost all of Qwabo's life history--the Kitonak was happy, nay, desperate, to chat while setting up his booth and stoking the fire, and Luke didn't have anywhere to be. Fest was something of an accidental destination for Qwabo; he'd gone to the stars to seek his fortune, but ended up in debt to a Hutt. Not nearly enough to deserve the carbonite treatment--Luke winced at that description, but the tale had spread far and wide--but enough so that the portly fellow kept his head down on Fest.

It also meant he blanched when Ros stepped out of the crowd and started walking toward them.

"Calm down, Qwabo," Luke said. "Ros isn't here to hassle you. She's bringing me some news."

"You--you _know_ that--that--personage?" Qwabo said, his voice quivering.

"We met last night."

"And you trust her?"

Luke nodded. "As far as this goes, yes. Here--keep the change."

Qwabo pocketed the extra gratefully, then studiously began rearranging his meat stacks while Ros approached.

"Skywalker."

"Beebo."

"Got you a lead. Human tailor in the west end. One of Max's guys works the night shift at the shop, might know somebody."

"I'm in your debt," Luke said. "How do I find this--Max?"

"Oh, you don't want to find Max," Ros said. "I'll take you. It's not far."

* * *

Luke waited at a round table in a cramped room. The room was dark, and smoke-filled; fumes from the tannery downstairs mixing with effusion from the rendering of fat. The smell made Luke's stomach turn; he desperately regretted the grilled bakki meat. He thought of Leia, and her peculiar and delicate turns of phrase at state dinners, and settled his innards as best he could.

The tailor's shop had led him to an outfitter for the local hunters; and that led to the tannery, where he found himself now. He'd been sitting the better part of hour, long enough to wonder if Ros was playing some sort of elaborate practical joke on him; but then the curtain pulled back, and two women ducked in.

They were both older than he was, with lined faces, but too young to be really called old. "You are Luke?" one of them asked.

"Yes, I'm Luke Skywalker," he said.

The other woman pushed back her headscarf and stared, openly, at him; stared up and down, as if she could see right through his flesh and bone to heart and spirit. Luke flinched for just a second; then, he opened his mind, and let her in, to see what she could.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, you are."

"I'm afraid I don't know your name."

"I think you do," the woman said, quite sadly.

He felt the need to rise, and take her hand, gently, between two of his. "Seki Andor."

"The locals call me Sek," she said, but didn't pull her hand away. "And it's been a long time since anyone called me Andor."

"But you are--you're--Cassian was your son."

"Yes, and yes," she said, folding her hands in her lap. They were thin, and strong, and looked older than the rest of her. "They told me, you know, when he died; told me what he'd done." She smiled, but it was a sad smile, one with tears behind it.

"And your husband was--"

"Oh, he wasn't my husband," she said. "But yes. Before he got Cassian involved in that--that damn fool--"

She stopped, and Luke could see a great crack forming inside her. He reached out with the Force, just a touch, just to give her strength, and--

Sek yanked her hand back, eyes suddenly dry. "What did you do?"

"I--I helped. With your grief," he said.

She pawed at her clothing, a frantic gesture, as if she could reach under it and cast off his influence. "Don't touch me! Don't do that. Why would you do that? Why would you take a person's suffering?"

Luke flushed. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking." He waited for the ground to open and swallow him whole; but no such intervention was forthcoming. With a great effort he once again slowed his pounding heart, stilled the rushing in his ears, pulled in his mind to look inward.

"How old are you?" Sek asked.

Luke had to think. "Twenty-three?"

"So young, to be so old," Sek said. The woman beside her nodded. "You have a spirit in you that has seen too much."

"I'm sorry," was all Luke could muster.

"It's not okay," Sek said. "But I forgive you. What brings you to Fest, Luke Skywalker, he of the old spirit?"

"Well, that's just it--Cassian. I--he--" This had gone better in Luke's head. "I wanted to--he's dead. I can't thank him. Without him, what I did--well, it would have been meaningless."

"And so you thank me instead."

Luke nodded, grateful she understood. "For raising him. For giving him a spirit to accomplish what he--well, more than I could have done."

"If he were here," Sek said, "he'd tell you that he did what he had to do. But he is not here."

Luke nodded, and reached into his pack. "There's--here." He put down the credstick, and the medal, and the letter. "This too."

Sek unrolled the letter. Luke had insisted they be written out long-hand, though it turned out his own penmanship wasn't up to the task: an official proclamation of thanks, made by the New Republic, for its fallen hero. The honorarium was generous but not crippling for the new government; Luke had scrounged contributions from the survivors, divvied it up as equally as he could.

Sek's companion took the medal and held it up to the light; it bore the crest of the New Republic, itself only a few months old, a starburst of hope surrounding the winged emblem of the Alliance. "What are we to do with this?"

"I don't know," Luke said; he was feeling a great wave of relief at the delivery, and struggled to keep his mind on the task. "Wear it; hang it up; melt it for the metal, whatever suits you."

Sek took it from the other woman. "I think I will put it with his shoe. He left a pair of shoes behind one night; dashed off in the rain, to join up with other boys pelting Imperial troops with rocks and bottles. I didn't see him again after that, and troopers came and took all of his personal effects; something about trying to find collaborators. But they left a shoe."

Luke nodded. "He sounds like he was quite a man, even as a boy."

"Even as a boy," Sek repeated.

* * *

The second skewer of meat went down easier than the first; Luke had asked Qwabo for recommendations, and ended up pairing it with a local mint drink that helped break down the tougher fats. He chewed thoughtfully as the sun set once again, staring at a list of names on his datapad.

"Hey, you ever find that woman?" the Kitonak asked.

Luke nodded, and crossed off the name at the top: Andor. Below it: Îmwe. Walker. Malbus. Wohsa. Erso.

So many. He pulled his chin up and looked into the darkening sky. "One down," he said. "Twenty-three to go."

==END==

**Author's Note:**

> After watching Rogue One, I was struck strongly by how much different A New Hope felt. This is my reaction to that.
> 
> edit 2017: After seeing The Last Jedi, I guess the film-makers were struck by this as well, though their story for Luke went a slightly different direction than mine...


End file.
